Tag Archives: intimacy

Intimacy in marriage is one of the most important indicators of your relationship’s health. If you and your spouse are not bonded spiritually, emotionally, and physically, you become far more susceptible to conflict and division. Quality time, vulnerable communication, and generous affection knit your hearts together into a beautiful union. Fortunately, there’s not much going on in your life to get in the way of these essential aspects of your relationship. Right?

Intimacy Killers

Stress

Work

Financial strain

Kids activities

Hobbies

Health problems

Family drama

Moving

Home maintenance

Life

With so many obstacles, it’s important that you periodically take time to evaluate your level of intimacy and determine if sufficient priority is being given to your relationship.

Gauging Your Marriage’s Intimacy

While couple’s build intimacy through a wide range of methods, there are a handful of classic elements you can evaluate to gauge your current level of marital intimacy.

Marriage is your most important earthly relationship. When you marry, the two of you become “one flesh.” If you starve your marriage, you starve yourself. Nourishing your relationship and prioritizing your mate is one of the most important things you can do each day. The only thing more important, is your relationship with God.

Commit today to taking one or two concrete steps to invest in building more intimacy in your marriage. The rewards you’ll reap will last a lifetime.

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When my wife and I first met, I was attracted to her personality. I loved her outlook on life and I loved the way that she made me feel when I was with her. I was drawn to her tender heart, enchanted by her great sense of humor, and of course magnetized by our chemistry. I grew to love her based upon these amazing qualities and the guidance of my wise Heavenly Father.

At some point in those first several months, a change occurred. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but my feelings for Tammy matured into an unconditional love. I ceased to care for her based upon how I felt when I was around her. Instead, I chose to love her for who she is and for the special place in my heart that she had taken up residence.

Unconditional love, held hostage by conditional hearts

Within a couple years, the pressures of blending a family and fueling a career began to take their toll on our lives. Stress robbed us of quality time, intimacy, and peace. We still loved each other, but the warm cloak of closeness and tenderness we once enjoyed had become threadbare. An overall selfishness and busyness overshadowed our home.

Did we love each other? Absolutely! We never stopped loving each other. Was love experienced? Was it FELT? Intermittently. Our love for one another was still unconditional, but our demonstration of that love had become very conditional. We handed out loving deposits as if they were a scarce resource that needed to be hoarded. Acts of love and kindness were exchanged based upon mood, stress, and the relative degree of tension or peace in our home. Our unconditional love was held hostage and sparingly demonstrated by self-absorbed, conditional hearts.

Love without boundaries

For those familiar with our story, things got worse before they got better. We came to the brink of divorce before recommitting to God, each other, and our family. A critical part of that renewal involved learning to demonstrate love without boundaries, rules, or conditions.

Early in our renewal process, we attended a weekend marriage conference from Intimate Life Ministries. We learned so much that weekend and truly grew as a couple. One of the exercises walks you through a visualization of seeing your mate as a child of God rather than as your spouse. This was a profound and life-altering experience for us both. In doing so, I learned to love my wife — on one condition.

Unconditional love — on one condition

Loving unconditionally is hard. Some days you just don’t feel loving toward your spouse at all. The epiphany comes when you stop attaching your love to how you feel. Feelings are capricious and unpredictable. My wife’s identity in Christ, on the other hand, is constant. I love my wife because He loved her first.

The one and only condition for my love is that she is a unique creation of my loving Heavenly Father. That identity makes her lovable. That relationship makes her worthy. God knew her before she was born (Psalm 139:13). Before she had a belly button, God had a purpose for her life (Jeremiah 1:5; 29:11). She was God’s child before she was my wife. The single and sufficient condition for my love, is that she is His daughter.

She deserved love and honor long before I ever proposed. It just took me a few years to wake up and realize it.

Touch is an incredibly powerful sensation. It is sensual, intimate, and essential for life.

Over 40 years of research point to the importance of affection in newborn and childhood development. We are hard-wired to crave physical touch, but all too often this is minimized in a relationship.

As important as touch is, couples tend to assume that if they hug, kiss, and make love, then they have experienced loving affection. WRONG! There is so much more to the magic of touch than that basic menu of options.

Our conversations dragged. Tension filled the room. Affection had become hit or miss. After three years together, our marriage had degraded into a cold and distant shell of what it once had been. The stress and pressure of blending a family, building a house, and traveling for work had robbed us of joy and crippled our intimacy.

Then, at the start of 2013 we tried something new in the bedroom and it radically changed our relationship, saving our marriage.

Our Recipe for Marital Intimacy

My wife and I put together a simple, four-step recipe for heating up our relationship:

Tuck the kids into bed

Close the door to our bedroom

Spend quality time together cuddling, watching TV, etc.

Then the magic starts….we pray together

At first our prayers were out of desperation, as we worked to repair the rubble of our marriage. In time, our prayers transformed to become more focused on our family, our future, and eventually on our mission as a couple.

The Power of Prayer

Through prayer, we have transformed the dynamic of our marriage:

Prayer for healing of past hurts

Gratitude for God’s redemption of our mess

We have sought wisdom and a clear vision for our future as a couple and a family

Prayer for peace during hard times

Strength to overcome the weight of guilt from past mistakes

Prayer has revealed new levels of intimacy

Fear is crushed and worry is obliterated through the power of prayer

Prayer draws us closer to each other by drawing us closer to God

Prayer has dramatically changed the fabric of our marriage. It has created a daily opportunity for us to stop, take stock of our lives, and connect in the most authentic and genuine way possible. It connects us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, knitting our hearts and minds together in a shared vision of our home.

The Power of Prayer

Sixteen months later, we still pray daily and the difference is dramatic. We cherish our conversations. We are relaxed and at peace around each other. Our affection is warm and natural. It’s taken a lot of work to rebuild our relationship; but nothing has been a bigger contribution to that healing process than our commitment to pray together every night.

The content in this post is adapted from our upcoming book (available on Amazon September 2014):

The Phoenix Marriage– Your most important earthly relationship can be restored, renewed, and reborn.